Hey Joe,
I did take the plate that holds the carbs together off when I cleaned them, but it only goes on a certain way and is properly fit and tight to the carbs....I do know it takes alot to get those suckers on there, I also used a heat gun on the boots to soften them up more to push on there, but I think the next step is to get some new carb boot isolators. They are starting to get pretty hard and some of them are cracked on the edge so might as well invest in them now and do things right. Do your isolator boots have #460 on them? Also on the bottom there are numbers, I have 1, 3, 3, 6 or something like that...